Consequences
by magickal1
Summary: Sam kills Jake, but it’s not because he’s going dark side. AHBL2.


_Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to the CW, was created by the god that is Eric Kripke, and All Hell Breaks Loose II was written by, again, the god that is Eric Kripke. _

_Summary: Sam kills Jake, but it's not because he's going dark side. AHBL2._

A/N: This borrows heavily from the script but this is my first foray into writing for the (awesomely amazing) Supernatural fandom, so all I want this to be is a bit of character exploration. Anyway, when I first watched AHBL2 Sam really freaked me out, but he had his reasons. This piece is completely un-beta'd. Any mistakes are solely mine.

**Consequences**

"Howdy, Jake."

Sam stepped out from his hiding place in the shadows, seeing Dean, Bobby, and Ellen doing the same thing from the corner of his eye. He stared steadily down the length of his gun at the man who had stabbed him in the back because of events that he didn't understand.

Jake threw Sam an incredulous look. "Wait...you were dead. I killed you."

Sam couldn't help but feel somewhat smug at Jake's confusion. Bobby had come through for him and patched him up. "Yeah? Well next time, finish the job."

"I did! I cut clean through your spinal cord, man. You can't be alive. You can't be." Sam finally recognized the look in Jake's eyes: it was fear. Sam shot a glance towards Dean, and right away he knew. Dean's face was shut down, and not giving anything away. Which, of course, meant Dean had done something stupid.

Sam couldn't find it within himself to think about that just yet. All he could think about was that he had died, or, at least, it was looking that way. Sam actually wasn't all that surprised with this new little piece of info. He had suspected something like this ever since he realized that both he and Jake had survived the Yellow-Eyed Demon's warped version of American Idol. No matter what Dean said, there was no way the Demon would assume Sam was dead without having some concrete reason to believe so.

Sam felt as though he was being dragged down by the undertow as the implications of this possibility – that Jake's attack from behind had killed him – crashed over him like a wave. There were always close calls in the whole business of hunting; it wasn't exactly the standard eight-to-five gig. Despite all that, despite the alarming number of times he and Dean, and, in the seemingly distant past, his father, holed up in a dingy motel room to patch each other up, they had always come through. The thought of death was always on the back of the mind, unspoken, but the idea that he had actually died…it wasn't the easiest thing to come to terms with.

Bobby's voice cut through the thickening tension in the dark graveyard. "Okay, just take it real easy there, son."

"And if I don't?" said Jake. His nonchalant attitude was starting to piss Sam off. Even though everyone always pegged Sam as the sensitive side of the duo that was Sam-and-Dean, Dean-and-Sam, when Sam had a real reason for being angry, he could be downright terrifying. And in Sam's mind, talking to someone who had definitely stabbed him, and probably murdered him, was enough reason to get goddamn pissed.

"Wait and see," Sam snarled. He cocked his gun, and tried to still the tremor in his hands.

"What, you a tough guy all of a sudden? What are _you_ gonna do – kill me?"

"It's a thought," Sam said, and for the first time, he realized that he had indeed been entertaining the notion of pulling the trigger.

"You had your chance. You couldn't," Jake snorted with derision. Sam flashed back to the moment that had decided his fate. Jake, lying prone on the muddy ground, unconscious – Sam, holding up his weapon – Sam, dropping it next to the dagger, the one that had apparently killed him, because of his need to be good. Sam couldn't kill Jake, because if Sam killed Jake, then maybe old Yellow-Eyes would win. Maybe the demon blood that flowed through Sam's veins would finally somehow take hold of him and he would become the leader of the army from Hell.

Sam hadn't killed Jake because he couldn't risk becoming his worst nightmare, and because of that, Jake killed him. He finally realized what Dean meant whenever he said that it was a kill or be killed world. There was no room for mistakes. There was no room for taking chances. Sparing the innocent was one thing, but sparing the life of someone who was trying to kill you was suicidal. Sam hadn't shot his father when he had been possessed in the cabin, and Dean almost died, his father's soul was now being punished eternally, and the Demon was still roaming the earth. Sam didn't kill Jake, and Jake killed Sam. Kill or be killed.

"I won't make that mistake twice," Sam snarled, and he knew that he wouldn't. Jake laughed deep in his throat and Sam internally shuddered.

"What are you smiling at, you little bitch?" Dean said, and Sam suppressed a smile. He could count on Dean to speak for him when he couldn't.

Jake suddenly snapped his head to look at Ellen. "Hey lady, do me a favor. Put that gun to your head." Ellen's hand, and the gun in was holding, slowly and jerkily drifted up to point at her skull. Sam's stomach was weighted with lead. If Ellen died, if Jake made Ellen kill herself, it would be Sam's fault for not killing Jake. Sam knew that he was being ridiculous, that if Dean knew what he was thinking he would tell Sam to stop trying to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, but all Sam could see were the consequences of his misguided actions. What was the point of trying to be good if the bad won in the end anyway? "See, that Ava girl was right. Once you give in to it, there's all sorts of new Jedi mind tricks you can learn."

The Jedi mind tricks that Sam had been resisting with all his being, but was now wondering, in some dark corner of his mind, if he should give in to. Maybe being good just wasn't worth it. "Let her go."

"Shoot him," Ellen urged, her voice trembling. She must have known, though, that no one was giving that plan of action a second thought.

"You'll be mopping up skull before you get a shot off," Jake said, confirming all of their thoughts. "Everybody, put your guns down." An afterthought. "Except you, sweetheart," he added, nodding towards Ellen, a lopsided grin grotesquely contorting his features. Bobby's gun dropped almost immediately, closely followed by Dean's. Sam grimaced, unwilling to give Jake the upper hand so easily, but he knew he didn't really have a choice. He raised a hand in surrender, and dropped his gun onto the hard ground. "Okay," Jake said slowly, looking around at all of them as though judging their distance from him, and Sam had a fleeting feeling of suspicion, "thank you."

Jake pulled the Colt out of his jacket pocked and lunged for the door of the crypt, inserting the head of it into what Sam suddenly realized was the keyhole to hell, and the Colt was the ticket in. Or rather, the ticket out. This definitely explained the need for a leader of a demon army.

Dean and Bobby grabbed Ellen, wrenching her gun hand away from her head right as her finger involuntarily pulled the trigger and the pistol went off, narrowly missing the three of them.

Sam raised his gun and made a split-second decision. He pulled the trigger four times. Jake fell to the ground, gasping, choking on his own blood that was spilling copiously from his mouth. Sam walked up slowly and positioned himself in front of the prone body.

The gun was still raised, and Sam's hand was shaking. "Please…don't." Sam recalled saying words along the same lines what seemed like weeks ago - _Don't do this Jake, don't play into what it wants._ "Please."

Three more shots rang into the night. Sam could feel his brother's eyes on him as he reached up to wipe Jake's blood from his cheek.


End file.
